Women escaping domestic violence to achieve safe housing : An integrative review

Journal article


Stulz, Virginia, Francis, Lyn, Naidu, Anshu and O'Reilly, Rebecca. (2024). Women escaping domestic violence to achieve safe housing : An integrative review. BMC Women's Health. 24(1), p. Article 314. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-024-03143-7
AuthorsStulz, Virginia, Francis, Lyn, Naidu, Anshu and O'Reilly, Rebecca
Abstract

Background
This integrative review summarises original research that explores women’s experiences of escaping domestic violence to achieve safe housing.

Methods
Integrative review. A robust search strategy was conducted using the following databases: Scopus, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL), Cochrane, Medline and PubMed. All articles were assessed for quality using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tools (MMAT) scoring. Whittemore and Knafl’s (2005) five stage approach was used to analyse the primary literature related to women’s and stakeholders’ experiences of escaping domestic violence to achieve safe housing.

Results
A total of 41 articles were retrieved and 12 papers were included in this review (six qualitative, one quantitative and five mixed methods) that fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Four overarching themes were identified: ‘Experiences of leaving domestic violence’, ‘Barriers to achieving safe housing’, ‘Facilitators to achieving safe housing’ and ‘The road to recovery’. The ‘Experiences of leaving domestic violence’ theme included two subthemes: ‘the losses’ and ‘ongoing contact with the perpetrator’. The ‘Barriers to achieving safe housing’ theme included three subthemes: ‘financial insecurity’, ‘being judged by others for leaving and service availability’. The ‘Facilitators to achieving safe housing’ theme included two sub-themes: ‘support, partnership, and collaboration between women and service providers’ and ‘feeling respected and heard’. The ‘Road to recovery’ theme included two sub-themes: ‘being a good mother’ and ‘empowerment after leaving domestic violence’.

Conclusions
This review has highlighted the need for service and health care providers to work together and collaborate effectively with the woman experiencing and escaping domestic violence, especially in rural and remote areas. This means giving women access to the most suitable educational resources and services that are appropriate for their unique situation. Tailoring support for women is crucial to enable women to achieve safe housing and to be able to live a safe life with their children, away from the perpetrator of the domestic violence.

Keywordsexperiences; integrative review; intimate partner violence; domestic violence; safe housing
Year2024
JournalBMC Women's Health
Journal citation24 (1), p. Article 314
PublisherBioMed Central
ISSN1472-6874
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-024-03143-7
PubMed ID38822284
Scopus EID2-s2.0-85194994977
PubMed Central IDPMC11140925
Open accessPublished as ‘gold’ (paid) open access
Page range1-24
FunderUniversity of Canberra
Publisher's version
License
File Access Level
Open
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Online31 May 2024
Publication process dates
Accepted14 May 2024
Deposited01 Jul 2025
Additional information

© The Author(s) 2024.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

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